Brian Viner: Humbling reminder of what it takes to earn true hero status

War and sport have an oddly symbiotic relationship. The Duke of Wellington said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, inspiring George Orwell, the old cynic, to remark a century or so later that the playing fields of Eton were where the opening battles of all subsequent wars were lost.

Whatever, for our boys in Iraq, football and cricket matches, whether they are taking part or watching on screen, offer much-needed bursts of escapism. At home, meanwhile, military metaphors are routinely deployed to describe the exploits of professional sportsmen. It was particularly rife during ITV's coverage of the rugby union World Cup. Martin Corry was "a man you'd like next to you in the trenches"; the England v France semi-final became "a war of attrition"; Jason Robinson was "battle-hardened".

Footballers do not get thus described, as a general rule. Nobody would want Dida, the Milan goalkeeper, next to them in the trenches. You don't want as your comrade-in-arms a man who collapsed to the ground, following a playful tap on the cheek from an over-excited Celtic fan, as if he'd just taken the full force of a mortar attack. What you want is a man who brushes off a mortar attack as if it were a tap on the cheek by an over-excited Celtic fan. But that's modern football, an exercise in histrionic over-reaction by pampered multi-millionaires. They could hardly be less like soldiers.

Yet the language of football is also the language of military strategy. Commentators talk about the counter-attack, the rearguard action, and so on, and taste sometimes goes absent without leave; I must admit that I watched Five's Uefa Cup coverage on Thursday almost certain that someone would be unable to resist a gag about Everton's trial in Nuremberg. After all, even Sir Bobby Robson, who should have known better, expressed his disapproval of the WAGS during last year's World Cup by saying: "It's war, and you don't take your wives and girlfriends off to war, do you?" It's a bloody good job it wasn't war, or we'd all be speaking German by now. Yet we've all talked glibly of sportsmen as "heroes", which makes you wonder what word to attach to a man who rescues his buddy from a burning Chieftain tank.

The late Keith Miller, an Australian Air Force fighter pilot during the Second World War, famously put sport and war into their proper perspectives when he was asked about a pressurised situation in a cricket match. "Pressure," he memorably quipped, "is having a Messerschmitt up your arse." About 15 years ago I spent one of the most absorbing hours of my professional life interviewing Miller. Even in his mid-seventies he had the aura of a man who'd once had a Messerschmitt up his arse.

All of which brings me to a new website ( www.cwgc.org/glory days), created by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The initiative, which is backed by the Premier League and the Football Association, is intended to show youngsters that the rheumatic old men being wheeled past the Cenotaph tomorrow are honouring not the memories of other old men, but the Michael Owens and Wayne Rooneys of their day. Not to mention the Emile Heskeys. The site, which is sub-titled The Glory Days – Football in Times of War, remembers Walter Tull, only the second black professional footballer in Britain, who played for Spurs and Northampton Town before the greater honour of becoming the first black officer in the British Army to lead white troops into battle. Second Lieutenant Tull of the Middlesex Regiment was killed on 25 March 1918, leading his men in an attack on German trenches.

We should all remember Walter Tull next time anyone describes a footballer, playing on despite having a bandage round his head, as a hero. We should also remember Donald Bell, a defender for Bradford Park Avenue, who won the Victoria Cross on 5 July 1916, after filling his pockets with grenades, sneaking up on a German machine-gun post, and capturing it on his own. He died five days later trying to do the same thing again. No fewer than seven Hearts players died, too, in the First World War, after the entire team had joined up on 26 November 1914, inspiring many of their fans to follow suit. It's all there on The Glory Days website, and it's humbling stuff.

At the same time, of course, we shouldn't blame our current sportsmen for plying their trades in a time of comparative peace. It's not John Terry's fault that he wasn't at Ypres or Passchendaele, pointing his bayonet at Kapitan Michael Ballack. Had he been, I don't doubt that he would have served with commendable courage. Indeed, our boys on the Western front could have done with him in the famous match in no-man's land on Christmas Day, 1914. There are various versions of the story, but according to one of those who took part, a Leutnant Niemann, the match took place in the Frelinghein-Houplines sector just outside Armentieres. Apparently, the Germans won 3-2.

b.viner@independent.co.uk

Who I Like This Week...

Steve McClaren, who managed to pull off a trip to sunny California at the Football Association's expense, apparently to check on David Beckham's fitness for a match that in all probability won't have the slightest impact on England's likely failure to qualify for Euro 2008. And after all that, he didn't even go to watch Beckham play, begging the question: what did he do while he was out there? Was he perhaps auditioning for a Hollywood remake of The Lost Weekend? Whatever, respect is due. Which of us would not wangle a few days in LA at our employer's expense, if only we had an employer as generous as the FA?

And Who I Don't

The government of Dubai, whose latest wheeze to turn their country into the world's top golf destination is to stage the richest tournament in history, worth $20m, at the end of the 2009 European Tour season. Which is all well and good, but there are a dispiriting number of golfers already who value prize-money over prestige – some decent American players still eschew The Open, reasoning that they can earn more at home. It will be even more offensive to see them clamouring to play in Dubai.